Final_rev3_6.pdf

Putting the word “final” in a file name is the surest way I can think of to get something in it changed.

Yet every week I see files come to my inbox named “final” as if the person making them was dictator and lord of all graphic design. Firm in the belief that they have some sort of control over their client’s constantly changing taste. Then they get revised.

Perhaps it gives the designer a sense of satisfaction for having reached the conclusion of a job well done. Or maybe they feel powerful using the word, as if by declaring it, they are therefore masters of the creative process. “THIS is the final design. Yes, the buck stops with me because I’m the designer of THIS design,” they must say under their breath as they excitedly press the floppy disk icon.

Which, by the way, Adobe, a floppy disk? Half the people using Acrobat have probably never touched a floppy disk or even seen one outside a 4th grade computer lab.

Everything changes. Nothing is final. Except maybe death, your eventual lot in life of cleaning up another mammal’s feces, or realizing that you regret not doing that thing you love so much now when you were younger.

In short, don’t name your files “final,” because I don’t think that word means what you think it means.